


Runaways

by xSpookyxSpicex



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Small Town, Billy Hargrove Is Bad at Feelings, Bisexual Steve Harrington, Gay Billy Hargrove, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Neil Hargrove's A+ Parenting, Panic Attacks, Period-Typical Homophobia, Protective Billy Hargrove, Sibling Bonding, Teacher Steve Harrington, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-17 11:07:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29591862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xSpookyxSpicex/pseuds/xSpookyxSpicex
Summary: Billy and Max are runaways. For three years, they have been running from place to place on the lam from their past. Unfortunately, the present has other plans for their future. When they run to Hawkins, they find a new home with new friends, new loves, and a new life. A life that completes them.But the past has a way of catching up to you.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove & Heather Holloway, Billy Hargrove & Maxine "Max" Mayfield, Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington, Eleven | Jane Hopper & Maxine "Max" Mayfield, Maxine "Max" Mayfield/Lucas Sinclair, Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington, Will Byers & Dustin Henderson & Eleven & Maxine “Max” Mayfield & Lucas Sinclair & Mike Wheeler
Comments: 8
Kudos: 59





	1. Prologue

Midnight. At long last, Billy is finally eighteen. Most boys his age would celebrate on a day like this, especially on such a clear night in July under the full moon. Perhaps sneak out of the house, gather a few friends, sneak into the fairground, crank up the radio, get drunk on someone’s stolen booze, and stuff their faces with junk food. Maybe even get laid.

Billy is sneaking out of the house, but not to party.

He steps as delicately as he can into Max’s room. He finds her in bed only pretending to sleep. It’s pretty damn late for a ten-year-old, but three little knocks and she’s wide awake. He places a finger to his lips. They have to be quiet. She nods and creeps out from under the covers and reaches for the suitcase under her bed. It isn’t a large suitcase, no bigger than her brother’s. Sure, she’ll miss her skateboard and he’ll miss his books, but they can’t bring everything.

Hand-in-hand, they creep past Neil’s room and try to avoid the little creek in the middle of the hallway. Max holds her breath. Billy tightens his grip. They feel almost like the heroes of a fantasy novel trying to make their way past the sleeping dragon. Soon, they can hear the late-night re-runs of _I Love Lucy_ playing in the living room and can breathe again. Susan sleeps so deeply, more so than Neil, especially when she’s had one too many bottles of wine. All they have to do is grab whatever food they can from the fridge and make it through the door.

Finally, the door is opened and they run as quickly and as quietly as they can to the Camaro. Billy starts the car. Even as he steps on the pedal, his heart feels like it’s about to burst from his chest. They speed past every house on every block, racing through the edge of town, and finally, they’re on the highway.

Billy could scream for joy, laugh like a maniac, or punch the air like he’s in a movie.

“You okay?” he asks. “How’re you feeling?”

“Like the butterflies in my stomach have butterflies. You?”

“Same, but don’t you worry, okay? It’s over.”

“You don’t know that. What if he comes after us?”

Billy sighs and lays a trembling hand on his little sister’s head. He can’t bring himself to look at the bruise blossoming on her cheek. _That son of a bitch!_

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I won’t let that happen.”

Max smiles weakly and nods. “Happy Birthday, Billy.”


	2. Welcome to Hawkins

“This place gives me the creeps.”

Billy smirks and shakes his head. “It looks fine, Max.”

“Exactly, it looks perfect. Maybe _too_ perfect. Like, _The Village of the Damned_ perfect _._ I bet the kids at school have those glowing hypnotic eyes that can kill you with just one look.”

“Y’know, I’m really starting to regret showing you those movies.”

“Why? I thought you _wanted_ to corrupt my innocent youth with violent video games, metal music, scary movies, and whatnot.”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“Like a charm! I’ll be shooting up the school in no time.”

Smiling, Billy reaches to ruffle Max’s red hair “That’s my girl.”

Hawkins is a pretty town with pretty streets and pretty houses that home pretty people and their pretty brats behind pretty white picket fences. It almost makes the Hargrove siblings sick, it’s so…pretty. Max wonders if they’ll be greeted by singing pagans plotting to sacrifice them to a giant man made of wicker. Their new home, if they can call it that, is as quaint as the rest of the town though nonetheless modest. The small apartment stands above a drug store.

“Home, sweet home,” Billy says, as they unpack.

Perfectly plain from the inside out, the siblings adorn the apartment with just enough things to be unpacked when they make their next inevitable leave. Billy finds his room and lays out a row of the now well-thumbed and half-broken books he’s kept for the past three years. Max decorates her room as much as she can with crinkled posters torn from teen magazines. Eventually, the place looks almost like a home.

“Look on the bright side,” Billy quips. “It’s better than New York.”

Max liked New York.

* * *

“Hey, did you hear about the new kid?”

Steve rolls his eyes. Everyone and their grandmother has heard about the new kid.

“I saw them yesterday,” he overhears one of his students gossiping. “Her brother is so hot!”

“Jenny, you think _every_ guy is hot.”

“I’m serious! This guy’s got this whole tough guy, rock star, bad boy thing going on, but you can just _tell_ he’s got a heart of gold, deep down.”

“How do _you_ know?” Mike Wheeler sneers.

“I just do. I mean, he has a little sister, so he’s gotta have a soft side.”

“That’s bullshit!” Dustin Henderson retorts and Steve is just a step away from writing him up for his language. “They could hate each other.”

“Then I’d hate to be a fly on _their_ wall. I heard they live alone.”

Lucas Sinclair drops his jaw. “All alone?”

“All alone. No parents, no guardians, no chaperones.”

Steve isn’t sure he likes the sound of that coming from a group of twelve-to-thirteen-year-olds. He’s at least grateful that Will Byers and El Hopper are the quiet types. Lord knows what they would have to say about Hawkins’ shiny new toy. Maybe he’s already grown to be a grumpy old man by his mid-twenties, but can’t imagine why everyone is talking about this new girl or her brother like they’re the next best thing since sliced bread. It’s not like it’s the first time someone’s moved into this hick town.

“Enough chatting,” he calls out. “Textbooks open.”

* * *

Hawkins Middle School looks just like every other school. Just like Pine View, just like H.B. Thompson, just like Jericho, just like Pearson. The classes are probably the same, the food probably tastes the same, and the people probably look the same too. Max can’t tell the difference anymore.

“You gonna be okay?” Billy asks. Max only shrugs. “I’m getting in with you.”

“Billy, I’m thirteen years old. You don’t have to hold my hand _every_ time you send me off to a new school.”

Much to her chagrin, that is exactly what he does. The school hallways are empty, sterile, and smell strongly of chlorine and citrus. Occasionally, they will pass by photos of past graduations, school dances, and sports teams. Finally, they reach Max’s assigned class room: Room 101. Billy opens the door and thinks to clear his throat, but is stopped still. He had expected Max’s teacher to be some stuffy old woman in gaudy florals or some stocky middle-aged man in a sweater vest, not some pretty boy in a tweed suit.

“So, who can tell me what Tolkien meant by…? Oh, hello! You must be Maxine.”

“Actually,” says Max. “It’s just Max. Nobody calls me Maxine except for Billy when he wants to annoy me.”

The pretty boy seems to suppress a laugh for a moment and takes off his glasses to look at Billy. Bambi eyes, Billy notices, big and brown. “I take it you’re Billy?”

“Yeah,” Billy says, but his voice breaks and he has to clear his throat. “Yes, I’m Billy Hargrove.”

“Steve Harrington.”

Mr. Harrington extends his hand for Billy to reluctantly shake. For someone so lean, he has a good grip and it makes him think of things that he really shouldn’t when there are children present.

“Max,” Mr. Harrington says. “Would you like to introduce yourself to the class?”

“Not really.”

“Okay, then, how about you find yourself a seat? Everyone, please make Max feel at home while I have a quick chat with Billy and when I come back I don’t wanna see this room turned upside down, okay? We all remember what happened on Halloween, right, Dustin?”

The classroom titters while a curly-haired kid in a baseball cap—whom Billy assumes to be Dustin—simply shrugs with a toothless smile.

“I’ll just be five minutes. Indoor voices, capiche?”

“Capiche,” the children echo.

“That’s what I like to hear.”

Billy raises an eyebrow. Most of Max’s teachers have been the type to spike their morning coffee with whiskey when they weren’t bitching about their students or shoving their big noses where they don’t belong. Mr. Harrington, on the other hand, talks to his students as if they’re his friends. Billy is especially grateful that he didn’t force Max to tell her entire life story to a class of strangers, unlike too many others had before.

As Max takes her seat, Mr. Harrington leads Billy to the hallway.

“I hope you don’t mind if I steal you away for a little bit,” says Mr. Harrington. “I know you must be busy, just moving into town and all, this is just something I do whenever a new kid comes into the scene.”

“You chat up their brothers?”

Mr. Harrington smiles. “I have a quick chat with their parent or guardian about things I should know; allergies, triggers…”

“Triggers?”

“Yeah, some students transfer under bad circumstances. Say, for example, if something bad happened to them…”

“Nothing bad’s happened,” Billy says perhaps too sternly. “We just travel a lot.”

“Okay, I’ll take your word for it.”

There’s an awkward silence between the two young men. All that can be heard is the echoing clock. _Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock._

“Do you guys plan on staying in Hawkins for very long?”

Billy shrugs. “Depends.”

“On?”

“I dunno. Just depends.”

_Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock._

“Is there anything about Max that I should know?”

Billy thinks a moment. “Just that she’s a good kid. Good at science, likes to skateboard, kind of a sassy little brat, but she’s a good kid.”

_Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock._

“What about you?”

“What _about_ me?”

“Is there anything I should know about you? What do you do?”

 _Read,_ he’s almost about to say before he bites his tongue. “I was actually gonna do some job-hunting today.”

“ _The Up-Side-Down_ is hiring, if you want something close by.”

Billy raises an eyebrow. “Is that some other dimension or something?”

Steve laughs. It wasn’t meant to be a joke. “Something like that. It’s a bookstore-slash-café, mostly specialized in horror and sci-fi. It looks like it might be your scene.”

Billy looks down at himself—ripped jeans, leather jacket, _Halloween_ t-shirt and all—andisn’t sure whether to take that as an insult or a compliment. “Thanks?”

“Any time. I’ll let you go, but let me know if you get the job, okay?”

“Um, sure.”

The young teacher smiles, as they shake hands, and returns to class. On his way out, Billy reflects on the awkward conversation he’s just had. He thinks and re-thinks anything he should have said and should not have said. Perhaps then, he wouldn’t feel like half the idiot he does now. He keeps thinking about those Bambi eyes and how they looked him up and down. Was the _Halloween_ t-shirt a bad idea or was his earring too obvious? More importantly: was Mr. Harrington—Steve—judging Billy or checking him out?

* * *

Max spends the best part of the morning trying her best to avoid the stares she gets, barely able to pay attention to Math or Science or Whatever class. She does try, of course, she just can’t hear her own thoughts over the whispers of the “new girl” and her “hot brother.” It makes her sick when it doesn’t turn her speckled cheeks redder than her own hair.

Then the clock strikes twelve. Lunchtime!

Max hates this part about moving the most: finding a place to sit at much. The cafeteria seating arrangements are all the same: the popular kids sit with other popular kids, the cheerleaders sit with the jocks when they’re not gossiping together, the smart kids find a quieter place to eat so they can cram in their last-minute homework, and anyone beneath them either leaps from clique to clique or sits alone. It’s a classic loner move to eat alone and anyone who does is considered an outcast, a freak, a loner, or all of the above. Personally, Max prefers to eat alone. No one bothers her that way.

Eventually, she finds an empty seat in some corner, where she can eat her lunch in peace.

“Hi!”

Max nearly chokes on her tuna sandwich. A group of boys stand before her with smiles plastered on their faces and they just stare at her like she’s a freak at the carnival.She recognizes them from class, of course: the tall one with dark hair, the short one with the shy eyes, the skinny one with the dark skin, and the girl with the overalls that look as if a rainbow has just vomited on them. “Can I help you?”

“We thought you’d like someone to sit with,” says the tall one and before Max can so much as open her mouth to say: “I’m okay, thanks, I like to be left alone,” the whole party is sitting down. They have her surrounded. Already, she feels as if she’s suffocating.

“I’m Mike,” says the tall one as he points to every last one of his friends. “This is Will, Lucas, Dustin, and El.”

“Max.”

“We know,” says the dark-skinned one named Lucas. “You’re in our class.”

“You’re new,” says the curly-haired kid called Dustin and Max is interrupted before she can make a sarcastic remark about his observation skills. “Other kids in class are saying you travel a lot. Is that true?”

“Well, not exactly. We…”

“Did you really go to every school in Europe?” Mike asks. “What’s Paris like? My sister really wants to go there someday.”

“I’ve never been outside of America. Billy and I just…move a lot, I guess.”

“Really?” Lucas says with wide eyes. “Where?”

“Chicago, Texas, New York…”

Mike butts in. “Where’re you guys from?”

“California.”

That earns an audible gasp from the entire party, safe for the mercifully quieter Will and El, who just stare with curious eyes. That’s when the questions bombard her. So many that she can’t keep track of who asks them.

“Did you live in Hollywood?”

“Were you, like, neighbours with movie stars?”

“Did you live on the beach?”

“What’s Harrison Ford like?”

“Did you go to Disneyland, like, every day?”

“Is your dad a famous director?”

Max’s half-empty stomach suddenly tightens as the food in her mouth turns to ash. Without thinking, she springs to her feet and stomps out of the cafeteria. She pushes and shoves her way through a clutter of kids. The space around her gets tighter and tighter to the point that it’s almost suffocating. It’s almost as if she’s drowning in a sea of children; filthy, crude, rowdy, and disgusting children.

Finally, the doors burst open. She’s outside. The air is clean from the smell of stinking kids and cafeteria food. It feels like the first breath after nearly drowning.

“Are you okay?” asks a soft voice.

Max turns around. It’s the girl among boys with the rainbow vomit overalls. “Uh, yeah,” she says weakly. “I’m…I think so.”

“Sorry about my friends,” the girl smiles weakly. “They ask a lot of questions.”

“Yeah, I noticed.”

“They’re only trying to be nice.”

“Nice,” Max mutters under her breath.

“They did that to me when I moved here, too.”

“Where did you move from?”

The girl blanches. “Bad place, but it’s okay now. I was adopted.”

Max recognizes something in the girl before her. There’s something off about her that she can’t put her finger on, but there’s a certain sweetness in her big brown eyes that gives her a warm feeling in her chest.

“Do you wanna walk?” the girl asks. Max nods. “I’m El, by the way.”

“I’m Max.”

The girls walk around the school yards for the better part of lunchtime and just talk.El is an odd one, Max finds. She’s blunt, first and foremost, and has a funny way of saying things. She talks like a kid, but seems to think like a grown-up. She hardly makes eye contact, but when she does, it seems to mean something. Above all things, El _loves_ Eggos and is obsessed with sci-fi and horror.

Max decides that she likes El already.

* * *

 _The Up-Side-Down_ certainly looks like another dimension. Any other bookstore or café in Hawkins would look every bit as sleepy as its hometown, but _The Up-Side-Down_ looks like more like every nerd’s dream. Posters of horror, sci-fi, and fantasy movies both old and new are plastered over the otherwise vines walls and it only takes a moment for Billy to realize that the movies are all based on books: _Frankenstein, Jekyll & Hyde, Carrie, Flowers in the Attic, A Clockwork Orange, 1984, Lord of the Rings, _and so much more that he can’t even count them all, let alone name them. On the shelves are new and used books of all kinds: chapter books, picture books, comic books, and some are even leather bound.

For the first time in a long time, Billy smiles. It’s been ages since he’s been able to get lost in a bookstore. Tucking the files of resumés under his arm, he picks up a well-thumbed copy of _The Shining._ He doesn’t know how long it takes before he hears a sweet voice asking him: “Need any help?”

Billy looks up from the page to see a pretty girl standing before him. She’s a head shorter than he is and is perhaps his own age, if not younger. Her eyes and hair are both dark, but he has never seen so many colours on one girl before.

“Uh…yeah, I heard you were hiring.”

“We sure are,” the girl quips. “I assume you have a resumé on you?”

Billy places the book down and shuffles through his files for a resumé to hand over. The girl reads thoroughly, raises an eyebrow, and smiles. _“You’ve_ been around.”

“Yeah,” Billy admits and hopes she’ll think nothing else of it. “I know it’s pretty eclectic, but…”

“No, I like eclectic. Show’s that you’re open to new things and you’ve probably noticed already, but we’re kind of eclectic ourselves.”

 _Wait,_ he thinks. _Is she…?_ “Are you the manager?”

The girl laughs. It wasn’t meant to be a joke. “You sound surprised by that.”

“You just seem so…young.”

“I’m wise beyond my years. Besides, I’ve been working here since I was sixteen.”

“And how old are you now?”

“Six-hundred-and-thirty-two…and a half.”

There something that Billy likes about this girl. As she looks back and forth between him and his resumé, she soon bites a well-glossed lip. “Can you make a latte?”

“Yes.”

“Cappuccino?”

“Yeah.”

“Macchiato?

“Yup.”

“Espresso?”

“Easy!”

“Okay, quick question: what’s your favourite book?”

Billy thinks a moment. He isn’t sure if he can put a name to a favourite of anything. Either he likes a book or he doesn’t. Thinking quickly, he names the one book that he must have read a hundred times: “ _The Little Prince_ by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.”

“ _Le Petit Prince?_ ” she says in near perfect French, her big brown eyes suddenly even bigger.

“Is that a problem?”

“No, you just strike me as more of the Stephen King type.”

Billy shrugs and puts _The Shining_ back in its place. “King’s pretty good, but I’m a bigger fan of Anne Rice and don’t tell anyone, but I kind of have a soft spot for V.C. Andrews.” Heather makes a gesture of zipping her lip and tossing the key down her blouse. "Honestly, I’ll read anything that’s well-written. _The Little Prince_ is just a comfort book for me.”

The girl smiles warmly and looks at his resumé one last time. “William, is it?”

“Billy is fine.”

“I’m Heather,” she offers a well-manicured hand to shake. “When can you start?”


End file.
